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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lyn Gardner

(I Am) Nobody's Lunch

I Am Nobody's Lunch
I Am Nobody's Lunch ... pales in comparison to What I Heard About Iraq. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

Once the cat is out of the bag you can't put it back in and that's part of the problem with this entertaining but slight show from New York's Civilians. Within the first 20 minutes you've grasped the question - how do we know what we know when everybody in power seems to be lying? - and also received the answer: with enormous difficulty. How much you enjoy the remaining hour depends very much on your taste for the company's vaudeville-cum-cabaret approach which turns the everyday anxieties and certainties of ordinary people into witty ditties and wistful peons to disenchantment and uncertainty.

The limitation is in the company style and method of work. It is too light to be really probing. Ringing up everyone called Jessica Lynch in the phonebook is kooky but not particularly insightful, and the more interesting interviews such as that with a young woman working in Homeland Security who is in despair because of the chaos and incompetence all around her gets lost when it rubs up against the insane ramblings of someone who thinks that they are channelling an extraterrestial.

In many ways in its determination to be whacky the show merely confirms the stereotypes of the American people as self-absorbed, navel gazing provincials who believe in abduction by aliens and are more interested in Tom Cruise's sexuality than their own country's foreign policy. Set alongside a piece such as What I Heard About Iraq - which also turns its attention to the disinformation culture in a post 9/11 world - this looks very small and just a mite silly.

· Until Aug 28. Box office: 0131 226 2428.

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